702 Music withKenny Maistry

Gauteng MEC for Roads and Transport, Dr Ismail Vadi has given Nancefield-Dube West Taxi Association (Nanduwe) and Witwatersrand Taxi Association (Wata) until Friday to make submissions motivating why their ranks and routes should stay open.

The MEC has sent a stern warning to these associations to end the violence or lose access to their routes.

The two taxi rivals Nanduwe and Wata have been involved in persistent violent clashes for routes in recent times.

To explain the rivalry and violence on these taxi routes, public transport analyst Paul Browning speaks to Bongani Bingwa.

He says when the democratic government came into power in 1994, it found that that there was already violence between different taxi associations.

It set up under minister Mark Maharaj a national taxi task team and one of the outcomes was the registration of associations. And the associations were able to claim the routes that they had originally operated.

— Paul Browning, Public transport analyst

Then they were allocated those routes so that no one else could take over those routes and compete with them. That worked for a while and inevitably other associations started to come in on the more lucrative routes, thus leaving the situation to deteriorate.

— Paul Browning, Public transport analyst

If the registrations of these routes were properly enforced, we might have less of these wars.